


this is my tree

by banrion_rua



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Minor Character Death, Modern AU, Multi, life unexpected - Freeform, strap in for the family feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-01 19:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14527539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banrion_rua/pseuds/banrion_rua
Summary: “Jesus, you don’t get a lot of visitors, do you? I’m not here to serve you, I just - “ Madi chewed on her lip for a second, trying to get the words out right, trying to just spit it out and get out of there as quickly as she could manage. “I’m sort of...comprised of half your gene pool?”Both his brows furrowed south at that one. She wasn’t nailing this.“I’m your daughter.”Goggles - Jasper, she’d soon learn - spit out the sip of coffee he’d just taken, and the guy in the beanie - Miller - didn’t even seem to be mad that half of it had landed on his back, just muttering, “holy shit” at the scene in front of him.Her father, however, was frozen solid, the only indication that he was still alive at all was the occasional blink from his wide open eyes.“Congrats, Papa-bear, it’s a girl.”-the Life Unexpected meets The 100 story of Bellamy, Clarke, and the daughter they gave up in high school. no family is perfect, but its theirs.





	1. Chapter 1

“Wake up and pour yourself a cup of coffee, Boston...or if you’re like Clarke here, the whole pot. I didn’t even know they sold mugs that big, Griffin.”

 

“At this point coffee runs in my veins and I have no shame about it, Collins. Nice try.”

 

“I’m pretty sure you sweat the stuff at this point.”

 

“No, no, I don’t sweat, Finn, I glisten, we’ve talked about this.”

 

Madi was well aware that everyone her age - really, _everyone_ in this day and age - listened to Spotify and podcasts and anything else on their iPhones, but she’d yet to find a foster parent willing to keep her longer than a few weeks, let alone foot the bill for an iPhone plan, so a cheap burner phone for emergencies and an old Walkman she’d found in lost and found at the group home years ago was what she was working with, and it worked perfectly fine, _thank you very much._

 

Besides, Wake Up with Clarke and Finn on 98.7 FM was actually pretty good. (Those two had _chemistry_ , okay?)

 

The bus jerked to a halt at her stop and she pulled the earbuds out, jammed the Walkman in her pocket and kept her head down as she shuffled off the bus. No one knew her, and honestly, the chances someone cared she was ditching school were slim to none, but still, she was used to keeping her head down.

 

She’d been doing it her whole life. It was part of her master plan: keep her head down, get by, survive and when she turns 16, get emancipated.

 

Spending the day before your 16th birthday getting paperwork signed by your birth parents, who never correctly signed away their parental rights in the first place before giving you up, for said emancipation seemed as good a reason as any to skip a day at Shallow Valley High School, anyway.

 

Even if that adventure happened to bring her to the front door of a dive bar called _Factory Station_ at 8 in the morning.

 

She pulled the ripped out phone book page from her back pocket, double checking (scratch that - quadruple checking) the name and address with one last heavy sigh, raising her fist to bang on the door. 5 minutes and 25 semi-aggressive knocks later, a definitely disgruntled mess answered the door, inky curls sticking out all over the place like he’d just rolled right out of bed and to the door. The scowl on his freckled face added to this theory.

 

“Uh, hi. Bellamy Blake?”

 

“Isn’t it a little early to be selling Girl Scout cookies?” his voice was flat, gruff. Oh yeah, she definitely woke him up. She’d almost be offended at the attitude, but she was on a tight schedule. (Plus, well, she wasn’t exactly a morning person herself. She could let it slide.)

 

“Is that the Budweiser delivery?” a voice shouted from behind him. Madi glanced back at another man behind the curly-headed guy in front of her, this one in a beanie (who at least tied his boots and looked like he’d been awake for more than 10 minutes), and another lankier man (a tote bag and goggles hanging from them screamed _nerd_ , but who was she to judge?) trailing behind him, travel mug in hand.

 

“Probably, but I’m sure as hell not a Girl Scout or beer delivery,” she said, pulling the paperwork out of her back pocket, a pen from her jacket pocket. “So, whichever one of you is Bellamy Blake, I just need your John Hancock and then I’ll be on my merry way and you can crawl back to your pull out couch, I promise.”

 

He either wasn’t awake enough to register the barb, or didn’t care, but he was awake enough to notice legal documents when he saw them. He stood a little straight, and ran a hand through his mess of curls, and cocked an eyebrow at that.

 

_That got his attention._

 

“Yeah, I’m Bellamy,” he said. “It’s also a little early for me to be served, don’t you think?”

 

The brunette teenager rolled her eyes, “Jesus, you don’t get a lot of visitors, do you? I’m not here to serve you, I just - “ she chewed on her lip for a second, trying to get the words out and play this cool, _just spit it out and get out of here, Madi._ “I’m sort of...comprised of half your gene pool?”

 

Both his brows furrowed south at that one. She wasn’t nailing this.

 

“I’m your daughter.”

 

Goggles - Jasper, she’d soon learn - spit out the sip of coffee he’d just taken, and the guy in the beanie - Miller - didn’t even seem to be mad that half of it had landed on his back, just muttered, “holy _shit”_ at the scene in front of him.

 

Her father, however, was frozen solid, the only indication that he was breathing at all was the occasional blink from his wide open eyes.

 

“Congrats, Papa-bear, it’s a girl.”

* * *

“Clarke Griffin, Class Princess, of course you wer - hey now, hey,” Finn chuckled, holding his girlfriend’s Arkadia High School yearbook hostage above his head. It worked, damn him - barefoot Clarke didn’t stand a chance, the tall bastard. He peeked inside again as she jumped at it. “Oh my God, Griff, look at those _braids_ …”

 

She gave up, crossing her arms and letting out a huff. “We had just gotten back from a cruise to Bermuda, I thought they were cool, and - you know what, I don’t owe you any explanations, _Spacewalker._ ”

 

She turned back to the living room, trying to make sense of some of her messy chaos because, after much arm twisting and back and forth, yes, she, Clarke Griffin, was finally moving in with her boyfriend, her partner, a Grade A Good Guy who she shouldn’t have had to talk herself into moving in with she just valued her privacy, okay -

 

_Get it together, Clarke, this is what they call adulthood._

 

It’s not that she didn’t love Finn. She did, very much so. He’s been her co-host for the past four years and somewhere along the way, their easy, flirty banter for the show was suddenly just as electric off the air, and after work drinks turned into after work dinners and after work sleepovers and they added up into a relationship. He was charming in that easy-going way, so opposite to her in a way that made her feel like she was in love for the first time again. With Finn, she could almost be the version of herself that everyone believed, this perfect, mostly put together, dare she even say it _fun_ version of Clarke Griffin that ruled the airwaves. With Finn, she got the chance at something _normal_ , for once in her life.

 

Didn’t mean it didn’t scare the hell out of her, though. Because at the end of the day, her story wasn’t normal, her secrets weren’t normal, but she’d spent too long burying all of that. She was a different person now, one she'd worked too hard to be.

 

“Hey, Princess?”

 

It was one of those moments she could point to that the air changed around her, everything shifted and it never could go back, even if she wanted it to. Cause there was Finn Collins, soft and nervous smile on his face, floppy hair in his eyes and down on one knee.

 

_Oh, shit._

 

“Finn...what...”

 

“Well, you see, when a man loves a woman and wants to spend the rest of his life with her, he traditionally gets down on one knee, a pretty diamond ring in his hand, and asks her, very nicely, if she’ll spend the rest of her life with him,” he said, reaching out for her hand. If he noticed hers was shaking, he didn’t comment on it, or that her eyes were watering. He looked completely at ease, the jerk.

 

“I...Finn, are you sure?"

 

It wasn't the right answer.

 

He sighed and stood, but his face was still soft and fond and so classically _Finn_ , like he fully expected this reaction and like it was somehow adorable and endearing that he’d just completely shifted Clarke’s entire world in the span of a few seconds.

 

“Clarke, I’ve been sure for a long time now that you are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, and I know what I’m getting into, before you try to talk me out of it,” he said, putting a hand up to stop her. “I know you hate pineapple except when it’s on pizza, and that your one act of rebellion ever was a red streak in your hair that your mom never even noticed. I know that, despite being tone deaf, you will sing Adele at the top of your lungs in the car and it’s the most endearing thing I’ve ever heard. You get a crease between your eyebrows, right here - “ his thumb brushes over the spot, and her eyes flutter closed for a minute, warding off tears, “when you’re really focused on a painting, and the world could be burning around you and you’d never notice. I know everything about you, Clarke Griffin. I know I love you, I’m in love with you, and I want to make a life with you, if you’d just let me. So what do you say, Princess?”

 

It was far from everything about her, God, if he only knew - but her heart was pounding, and her eyes blinked back open, a watery laugh escaping her lips while her head started nodding.

 

She ignored the pit gnawing at her stomach as he slid the ring on her finger, pushing the whisper that sounded an awful lot like a smug, curly haired boy she used to know to the far corner of her mind where it belonged.

 

_Well, not everything, huh, Princess?_

* * *

“Alright, once more, from the top,” Madi announced, clapping her hands together and blowing a puff of air as she stood facing the three baffled, overwhelmed grown men on the couch in front of her.

 

Look, she got it, it was probably a lot to take in when a 16 year old girl shows up at your door saying she’s your kid (hell, even Jasper called out of work for the day for drama this major, though she suspected he might be enjoying it), but she had a plan to stick to and not all the time in the world, so he’d have to swallow this pill sometime today.

 

“You and some girl 16 years ago seemingly forgot any information you learned in sex-ed and then put me up for adoption. Clearly, I didn’t get adopted, I’ve been bounced around foster homes and now here I am because social services, surprise surprise, screwed up the paperwork when I was born. I’m just looking for your signature and the name of whoever my mother is so I can get hers, too. The sooner we do this, the sooner you can get back to...whatever it is you all do around here.”

 

This wasn’t the first bomb that had been dropped on Bellamy’s life, but this one certainly ranked pretty high, somewhere up there with his mother’s sudden death 15 years ago and, well, when he was told just before graduation his senior year that he’d gotten a girl pregnant in the first place. Lucky him, both events hit his life all at once, because when it rains, it’s a torrential fucking downpour for a Blake.

 

But, yeah. Learning that this hadn’t all gone even a little how he’d thought was - he was still processing the words. Sort of. Barely.

 

“Bellamy Bradbury Blake, I can’t believe you never told me, it’s like I mean nothing to you!” Jasper, Madi had already picked up, was uniquely dramatic and a _lot_ to take in, and yet, he was oddly endearing.

 

“Seriously, dude, this is kind of a big deal. How did we not know?” Miller added in, sounding less hurt but curious all the same. Madi had already pegged him as the solemn type. She liked him.

 

Bellamy sighed, running his hands over his face for maybe the millionth time that morning. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to tell them - well, okay, maybe a little - but, it’s just that his life had been falling apart into utter fucking chaos back then. His mom was pretty off the rails by that point, Octavia spiked from zero to one hundred in her teenage angst, and then he knocked up the one girl he had no business associating with in the first place.

 

“Look, we hooked up prom night, and there was a lot going on all at once and I thought she - “

 

“Who? Roma?”

 

Bellamy shook his head, hesitating for a minute. If he were them, he wouldn’t believe what he was about to say, either. “No, it was...Clarke Griffin.”

 

He could’ve heard a pin drop down the street and around the corner.

 

“You mean to tell me that you and the princess herself Clarke Griffin slept together and I never heard about this?! Nate, catch me, I’m going to faint.”

 

Miller glared at Jasper, willing him to shut the hell up, but Bellamy wasn’t paying them any attention - his eyes were on the teenager in front of him, who, God, now that he looked at her, _of_ _course_ she was his, her long dark hair and that Blake stance, but her attitude, the fire in her eyes -

 

She was so like her mother, it nearly knocked the wind out of him.

 

“Wait, you’re telling me….Clarke Griffin, from the radio, that Clarke is….is my mother?” she finally squeaked out. For the first time this morning, she, at least, seemed stunned, too. “Holy... _fuck_ _._ ”

 

He heaved off the couch, suddenly buzzing and needing to move. His brain apparently caught up with the Twilight Zone episode he was currently in and now the thing that wouldn’t work a minute ago wouldn’t _stop_ _._ “I need a beer.”

 

“Make that two,” Madi - his  _daughter_  - chirped, having moved to his vacated spot on the couch, still shell shocked. He frowned her way, unimpressed - life altering bomb or not, serving underaged teenagers was not exactly his style - and she gave him a small grin and a shrug.

 

(And if his heart skipped at making his daughter smile, well, he wasn’t telling.)

 

The silence was heavy for a minute while Bellamy opened a beer - if anything called for a beer in the morning, it was your teenage daughter showing up on your doorstep after sixteen years unannounced and opening a door to a past life he’d long shoved away. It’d been years since he’d let himself think about Clarke Griffin and their baby and the life he could’ve maybe, just maybe, had. Years since he let himself wonder, in the quietest hours of the night, if their child had a blonde halo of curls like her mother, or his inky curls and freckles, and whose eyes might she have?

 

_You closed that door for a reason, Bellamy._

 

“Listen, it’s been a long, _long_ time since I’ve talked to her. I’m not sure she’d even….really remember me…”

 

“Not too sure there are many women who forget about the guy that knocked them up on prom night, Pops.”

 

Across the room, Miller snorted, which gave Madi a flicker of delight. Yeah, she definitely liked him.

 

A humorless laugh escaped Bellamy. Jesus, this whole thing was just...really not how he pictured his day going when he woke up this morning, to say the least. “No, definitely not, you’re right. I just...I’m not sure how I can help? On that end. I have no idea how to get in touch with her, or if she’d answer at all, considering I’ve never exactly been her favorite person...”

 

“You’re in luck, oh roommate of mine,” Jasper said, nose in his phone as he scrolled through - ah, there. Bellamy’s phone pinged as Jasper forwarded him a number, winking Madi’s way. “One current phone number for Ark’s princess. You’re welcome.”

 

Madi looked from Jasper back to Bellamy, and try as she might, some spark of nerves shown through her mask, excitement or anxiety he couldn’t exactly tell. His own nerves were chewing through his stomach, probably would be an ulcer before lunch. He watched as she chewed her lip again, waiting.

 

_Right. You're an adult. You can do this._

 

It rang twice before going to voicemail, and he gave it a second try before it did the same - did she have his number? Was she ignoring him? _How the hell would she have your number, Blake, it’s been 15 years, you idiot. And of course she wouldn’t answer your call if she had it, why do you even -_

 

“The show,” Madi said, interrupting his thoughts, reassuring herself or him, he wasn’t sure. “She’s still on the air. She probably can’t answer.”

 

The twinge of disappointment that seeped through in her voice - whether he imagined it or not - was something he just couldn’t take.

 

“Guess we’ll just have to do this the old fashioned way, then,” he said, ignoring her confused look as he reached for his jacket and the keys to his old, beat up truck. “You coming or what?”

 

There was that grin of hers, again. He couldn’t resist mirroring it this time. _Man, I am so screwed._

 

* * *

“Look, all I’m saying is, if we went to high school together, we would have never crossed paths, Class Princess.”

 

“Hey, just because I wasn’t part of Student Greenpeace and whatever poetry group you were into doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have been friends!”

 

Finn scoffed into the mic, though that smirk on his face had been a permanent fixture for the past 24 hours and showed no signs of leaving. She couldn’t do much to hide hers today, either, even with the diamond ring hidden in her bag, away from their producers eyes just yet. Let the bliss bubble last as long as possible (and avoid, at all costs, the HR hell storm of paperwork that’d be coming their way). “Oh yeah, you’re right. Saturday detention with the criminal, the jock, and the basketcase would’ve brought us together.”

 

“Excuse me, are _you_ the brain in this Breakfast Club dream of yours?” she caught a wave from Anya, their producer, and nodded, “Let’s see what the callers have to say about this one. So what do you think, caller, is Finn the brain here, or is he just stoned Emilio Estevez?” She dodged a paper clip thrown her way with a victorious smirk.

 

“Uh, tough call on that one, Princess, but if I recall, you would’ve written that essay the second it was assigned.”

 

And just like that, her short-lived bubble was no more. Her face dropped, hearing a deep voice she’d spent years trying to forget, and had successfully avoided for fifteen years now. Finn looked on confused, but seemed to piece something together, pleased with himself, before scooting in closer to his own mic, blissfully ignorant to the crashing of Clarke's very world.

 

“Wait a second, wait a second, did you go to high school with our dear Clarke here? Oh, this is too good to be true. What’s your name, man?”

 

“Bellamy. Look, Clarke, I really need to talk to you out in the parking lot, like now - “

 

She was shaking her head frantically, feeling her worlds closing in on her and needing to pump the brakes immediately, this was _not happening_ , _no fucking way_ . She turned to Anya, desperation on her face, but she just laughed it off, figuring this was regular grade high school embarrassment. _No, no, no…._

 

“We definitely don’t need this trip down memory lane, but thank you _so much_ for calling in, Bellamy,” she all but growled out. Finn, the bastard, just laughed.

 

“Hold on there, what could be so bad? Let’s hear it, Bellamy! Give us the dirt on high school Clarke, maybe clue us in to why she’s sweating buckets at her desk right now. Was it headgear? Tell me it was headgear.”

 

“Finn, we really don’t - “

 

"Look, dude, I'm just trying to talk to Clar-"

 

“Or was it a bad talent show? Is there footage? Did she jump on the table and dance to Biggie at Bogey Lowenstein’s party?” She was more than desperate now, throwing a stress ball at the glass, anything she could get her hands on, begging Anya to step in, _come on_. “Come on, Clarke, it can’t be that bad, it’s not like you were the girl who got knocked up at the prom or something, relax - “

 

Her whole body went stiff, and her face must’ve gone whiter than a ghost. She swore her spirit left her body, she was just a ghost, watching the horrific wreck play out with absolutely no control over what came next. 

 

_Fuck._

 

“I mean, technically, it was during prom, but we had already left, so...” Bellamy finally piped in after a few seconds of dead air.

 

In that moment, she swore to every god out there that she’d never hated anyone, _anyone_ , as much as Bellamy fucking Blake.

 

* * *

Her hair was shorter, waves falling just below her chin now, but holy hell, that hurricane look in her eyes was still the same Clarke he remembered from all those years ago, storming out of the studio like a bat out of hell into the parking lot. He felt Madi step back. He couldn’t blame her.

 

“What the actual  _fuck_ is wrong with you?!” she all but screamed, her cheeks tinged red as she marched right up to him. Despite the height difference, he sure felt small. “In what world is it okay for you to bombard me and humiliate me on air for the world to hear, what the hell did I ever do to you, seriously?!”

 

He put his hands up, “Look, I’m really sorry okay, but we couldn’t get a hold of you and then they wouldn’t let us in the building and - “

 

“It’s been fifteen years, Bellamy, you have _no right_ \- “

 

“Would you just _listen?!_ ” he snapped, before sighing, closing his eyes for just a second and steeling himself, knowing that as little time as he'd had to process this, she'd had even less. “I can explain, okay?”

 

“Are you kidding me?  I highly doubt that whatever bullshit you have to say to me right now is - “

 

Madi stepped out from behind Bellamy, finally making her presence known and Clarke halted, furrowing her thin brow, finally realizing they weren't the only two people in this parking lot. Bellamy looked at the girl, who gave a slight nod, before he turned back to the blonde in front of him.

 

“Clarke, this is Madi. Our daughter.”  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

When Madi used to let herself dream, this was exactly the kind of thing her heart would conjure up. A family, her mother and her father right here, _she could touch them_ , and even if they weren’t perfect they seemed perfectly nice and they were _hers_ , and for a second, she’d let herself think _this is it, this is family_ , and maybe they’d be happy to have her here, too.

 

(Lucky for her, she’d grown out of dreams. Dreams were for suckers, for the weak, and she couldn’t afford to be any such thing.)

 

The reality was, she needed to get in and out, nice and clean. These were just two people who happened to donate some DNA to her and she needed their signatures (one down, one to go) and then she’d be out of here and leaving this all behind her because she’d learned a long time ago that the only person you can ever afford to get attached to is your damn self.

 

Madi gave a tentative smile, raising her hand slowly in a wave, as if approaching a wild animal with caution. The only indication that Clarke was still breathing at all was the fact that her eyes seemed watery, and her hand had gone to her chest a minute ago, like she needed to feel her own heartbeat to be sure she was really here at all.

 

The blonde glanced back and forth between Bellamy and the teen, whispering a barely audible “Bell…” (And if Madi had been paying closer attention, she might’ve seen the flicker in her father’s eyes, the barest hint that his heart had clenched right then and there.)

 

_Now or never, Madi._ She gave her mother a soft smile and stepped forward a bit more, taking a gentler approach than she had with Bellamy. This felt, somehow, different. “Hi.”

 

Maybe it was her voice, who knows, but whatever it was seemed to snap Clarke out of it. “Oh my God….” she whispered, stepping forward even further, but not quite closing the distance, not yet, like she wasn’t sure it was real. “I can’t believe you’re - you’re here, I mean, what’re you - how - “

 

“Turns out, some paperwork got screwed up and Madi here has something for you to sign,” Bellamy explained, leaning against the side of his truck, giving the girls just enough space, almost as if he was intruding, somehow.  

 

“I have my emancipation hearing tomorrow, but my case worker said I’d need to get this figured out if I had any hope, so…”

 

“Wait, emancipation...are your parents….are you okay? Are you hurt? The social worker said that they had a good family waiting for you, I don’t...”

 

Complete sentences weren’t exactly coming to Clarke in this moment, but the thing is, she’d never have forgotten the fact that the social worker had promised her, _swore_ to her, that her baby would go to a good home, that people would want her and love her and provide for her. It was the only way she could stomach what she’d done, the only way her and Bellamy had had a chance of moving on. Something wasn’t adding up.

 

Madi gave a half smile, but it was one that made Clarke’s stomach drop. “It’s a long and not that thrilling story, trust me. I, uh, I never...got adopted, obviously. I don’t know if they told you, but...when I was born, I had this blood thing called sickle cell disease, and I needed treatment and a bone marrow transplant. I guess I was lucky I got one, but I was also in and out of the hospital for a bit. Damaged kids don’t exactly make the cover of the pamphlet, y’know? The other kids were Chanel, and me, I was Walmart.”

 

Some therapist once told her she had quite the talent for using humor as a defense mechanism. (And she’d, of course, taken it as the highest of compliments.)

 

Look, she’d had a long time to accept that life just was what it was - it wasn’t fair or unfair, it just _was._ She’d been bounced around enough shitty foster homes only to wind up back at the same old, slightly less shitty group home time and time again to know that no fairytale ending was coming her way.

 

She could cry about it, but what good would that do?

 

Bellamy and Clarke, however, were a different story. Clarke wasn’t sure her heart had ever broken quite like this - not when Wells, or her dad...no, this was all together something different. Because that was her child, who’d been fighting since day one and _she wasn’t there._

 

Because she’d been promised. The only thing that had kept her going all along, the thought that made it all okay, was the fact that her daughter found a family to love and provide for her, to give her a life Clarke and Bellamy just _couldn’t_ , not then, not like they were.

 

It was taking everything in her not to break down right then and there, but that wasn’t fair to Madi.

 

One look at Bellamy and she knew he was just hearing this for the first time, too, and maybe it’d been a lifetime since she’d seen him, but she could read him, even still. His heart was practically being ripped from his chest in front of a live audience. She knew the feeling.

 

Madi couldn’t take it.

 

“Look, I’m fine, okay? I promise! Honestly. And really, I don’t….I’m not here looking for anything other than your signatures and then we can all go back to how things were,” she said, giving an almost real laugh while she pulled the paperwork from her back pocket again, showing Clarke.

 

Her mother seemed hesitant, but she nodded, finally grabbing the paperwork and biting back the millions of questions she still had.

 

“Oh, uh, hold on,” Bellamy said, reaching inside the open window of his trunk to the glove compartment, popping it open and digging for a second before lending a pen her way. Their fingers brushed, and if she wasn’t halfway in shock as it was, she might’ve given a brief second of thought to the flip in her traitorous stomach.

 

Clarke handed the signed paper back to Madi, hand still shaky. Madi didn’t comment.

 

“Can I...is there anything I can do? Can I help? Do you need money, or...”

 

A lifetime or not, Bellamy had never heard her sound so unsure, so helpless, but damn if he didn’t feel exactly the same.

 

Reality was sort of crashing down by the tons this morning, after all. He couldn't blame her.

 

“Really, I promise, Clarke, I’m fine,” Madi said, and were this not them, Bellamy might even laugh at the fact that this fifteen year old kid was comforting a thirty-three year old Clarke Griffin, who he’d never known to show a tear in public. “We’re all good. Now I just have to head in town to drop this off to to social services and, y’know, life goes on. So, thank you. Both of you.”

 

Bellamy smiled her way, but already felt something cracking in his chest at this goodbye. Hell, this morning he’d never even known her name, what she looked like, but now this felt like it would break him beyond repair.

 

“I can take you,” Clarke cut in, not quite ready for this to be it, either. Maybe she was dragging out the inevitable heartbreak of giving up her daughter _again_ , but she deserved this, didn’t she? Just a few more selfish moments. She could give this to her daughter, even if it was just a ride. “In town. I could take you, if you wanted.”

 

“Don’t you have a radio show to get back to?” Apparently, no matter the year or scenario, Bellamy Blake would never refuse an opportunity to poke at Clarke Griffin. (They say some things never change, but Clarke noted that absolutely nothing about Bellamy had changed aside from the shadow of a beard he was now sporting.)

 

“I mean, yeah, but Finn - shit, Finn,” she paused, forgetting for a minute there all about the show, about the fiancé she'd left inside after the father of her high school lovechild called into their radio show. Still, he'd have to understand. _I hope_. “Finn’s in there, he’ll be fine. I can take her.”

 

Madi was biting her at bottom lip again, this time to stop a smile that she couldn’t stop. “Okay, yeah, if...you’re sure?”

 

“Yes, I'm absolutely sure. I’d love to,” Clarke said, almost too enthusiastically, her voice higher than normal.

 

“Cool,” Madi agreed, turning to Bellamy. “You don’t mind, right?”

 

“Nah, of course not,” he said, almost too coolly, already opening the door to his truck with one hand, scratching at the back of his neck with his other. _Already halfway out before you were ever in, your specialty_. “I’ve got stuff to do, y’know….busy day at the bar and all.”

 

Maybe his life hadn’t dealt him the kindest hand either, but this pain - meeting and quickly saying goodbye to his daughter - was one he and he alone had earned. Even if it was for the right reasons, he’d given up on being her father. He wasn’t allowed to be disappointed - he’d never earned the right.

 

His act apparently worked well enough on Madi, anyway. She laughed, rolling her eyes. “Oh yeah, and I’m sure Miller and Jasper are lost without you.”

 

This time, his smile was real. “You’re probably right about that. But, hey, I mean….you know where to find me - us. If you ever need anything, y’know, or just want to…”

 

He trailed off, because what was it that she would even want to come back for? What else was he good for to her, besides a signature?

 

_You earned this pain, Blake._

 

Her eyes softened, but her smile stayed put as she ducked her head, nodding, and trying to ignore the heavy weight settling in her stomach. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ll...see you around sometime. Thanks, Bellamy.”

 

She turned to Clarke then, the two of them walking away towards her car, and back out of his life...again. He was frozen on the spot, his feet not ready to move, his eyes trying to memorize, just for one more second, what they looked like, what this felt like, even just for a day.

 

Clarke glanced back his way, a sad smile on her face and nodding at him, in thanks or just as one last goodbye, one last punch to his gut.

 

He threw himself in the truck, slamming the door.

 

* * *

She was picking up things about her birth parents as the day went on. Bellamy had absolutely no hope of taming his curls, and pulled at them when he was nervous. Clarke chewed her lip when she was nervous, just the same as Madi. Bellamy clenched his jaw when he was thinking too hard. He also lived above a bar, with two of his best friends, but he owned furniture beyond a futon which qualified as semi-adult, she supposed.

 

Clarke, on the other hand, drove a Prius. With a white knuckled grip, like she was going to burst at the seams with all her questions, but nothing would come out of her mouth. Madi couldn’t take the thick silence for the next 20 minutes.

 

“I listen to your show,” she said, figuring that was the safest ground. Radio, good. Teenage pregnancy and subsequent abandonment, bad. “You guys are funny.”

 

“Oh, thank you,” Clarke said, taking the olive branch. Hell, she would've taken an olive twig. “We, uh...definitely have fun with it. Though Finn probably didn’t think today’s show was quite as fun as usual….I wouldn’t be surprised if he asks for the ring back, honestly.” Her brain wouldn’t stop, which apparently meant her filter wouldn’t turn on, either.

 

“You two are _engaged_?! I totally fucking knew it," she said with a smug smile lighting up her face. "Anyone with ears can tell you two had something going on, but wow…”

 

“Well, hold off on the congrats just yet,” Clarke said. She’d royally fucked up her engagement less than 24 hours into it, after doing a shit job accepting it in the first place. She was trying not to think about it too much, and just focus on one life bomb at a time. “It’s my own fault, I never...I never really got around to telling him about you.”

 

“Why?”

 

She wasn’t sure who was more surprised - Clarke at hearing the question she’d been asking herself for years at this point, or Madi at herself, for letting the question pass through her lips, outloud, a question she'd made herself stop asking a long time ago. (It was easy, when you realized the answers never made you actually feel any better.)

 

“I don’t….I don’t really know,” Clarke confessed, wincing. “I guess I didn’t know how to tell him, and the more time that passed, the harder it got. I didn’t want him to judge me for what happened. For decisions I made almost sixteen years ago.”

 

_No one could judge me harder than myself._

 

Madi turned her head back out the window, her brief giddy mood from earlier quickly souring. She didn’t want to care, she’d survived this long by forcing herself to stop caring, but now that she was _here_ , with her mother, a chance she never thought she’d get...she couldn’t stop herself. 

 

They drove in loud, heavy silence again, Madi pushing down every feeling threatening it’s way back up, and Clarke not knowing how to mend a bridge that had barely gotten past the blueprint stage. Thankfully, it was only another ten minutes before she pulled up to a sidewalk spot in front of the social services office.

 

Madi made no move to get out just yet, still staring ahead. Her jaw clenched, an all too familiar Blake tic, and it made Clarke’s chest ache. “Madi, I’m sorry...”

 

“Did you ever even consider keeping me?”

 

Clarke sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. Had she thought about it, wished somewhere deep down that it could've worked somehow? Of course she'd considered it, before she remembered that wishes and reality were two very different things. “Madi….”

 

Before she could finish, the girl had already unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her door, not wanting to hear an answer she already knew, not knowing why she'd even bothered asking in the first place. “Hey, Madi, wait - “

 

She got out, grabbing Madi’s elbow on the sidewalk, stopping her from disappearing for good before she could get the words out. “I was barely older than you are now, okay? My dad had just died, and I was a mess. I’m still a mess. I wasn’t ready to be a mom, Bellamy sure as hell wasn’t ready to be your dad, and you deserved better than us. We weren't ready to be parents, okay? You needed real parents, not us. I’m just...so, so sorry that you didn’t get that, because that was all I ever wanted for you, that was what your social worker told me you’d get. I was trying to do the right thing, I _tried_. I never thought you wouldn't get that.”

 

Her eyes were glassy, by the end, her touch soft on Madi’s arm as Madi blinked back her own tears. _What the hell did you expect, Madi? That this was all a mistake? Don't be a fool_. She gently, slowly pulled her arm away, and Clarke’s heart shattered as she watched her daughter nodding her head and then jutting out her chin, like she’d put her wall right back up and ten feet higher than before in a blink.

 

“It’s okay, Clarke,” she said. “It’s fine. You didn’t know, I get it. I, uh...I should probably get this paperwork inside now.”

 

“Madi…don’t you…couldn’t you just maybe wait, see if a family will adopt you? I mean, emancipation, living on your own, it’s _a lot_ to handle. I know I thought I knew everything at your age, too, but I didn’t, and - “

 

Just like that, a switch flipped in Madi, and Clarke swore she saw flames in the girl's eyes, something close to hate. “ _Wait?_  I’ve done my waiting. Fifteen years of it. They didn’t want a baby, they sure as hell don’t want a teenager. I mean, you can relate, can’t you? Not wanting me?”

 

Before Clarke could even react to that slap in the face, Madi pushed onward, her Blake temper coming out in full force, fifteen years of pent up hurt and anger bursting from her pores. 

 

“No offense, but I’ve made it my whole life without a mother,” she spat. “I think I’ll keep managing just fine without one now.”

 

Clarke waited for her to storm into the building before getting back into her car and bursting into tears.

 

* * *

“So, Finn, where’s your lovely cohost tonight?”

 

Even after a show like today’s, after he was blindsided on live air by the father of his fiancé's child (a child he'd never even known existed, to boot), Finn was nothing if not professional. The man knew how to schmooze a crowd, how to recover from a fumble before anyone had even noticed he’d tripped. He told himself he could do this, just get through tonight and play it all off. It was what made him such a perfect fit for radio in the first place, he just flipped on that switch and boom.

 

That, and booze helped.

 

He took another long sip from his drink, glancing around the crowd at this rooftop event for the network - the universe, it seemed, was a bitch, and also having a good laugh at him. Just before turning back to the semi-polite and completely annoying guests that had cornered him like prey, he caught a flash of blonde, and played it entirely too smoothly as Clarke found her way beside him.

 

“Ah, here she is,” he said, already starting to turn his body from the two woman, grateful for an out. Besides, Clarke owed him one hell of an explanation. “Nice to meet you, ladies, but I think my cohost here could use a drink.”

 

He whisked her away with a hand at her back, away from the crowd, and his award-winning grin finally faltered once they found themselves further from the crowd. “Finn….”

 

He guided them toward a high table in the corner, and stopped to look her over. Red cocktail dress, curls pinned back, black makeup lining her crystal blue eyes, which currently were working hard not to meet his own.

 

(Clarke Griffin had made herself an expert a long time ago on making it look like she was completely put together on the outside while her world was up in flames inside. It was an art, really.)

 

“Look, I’m sure you have...a million questions.”

 

“You think?”

 

She frowned for a moment, finally looking at him and trying to play it off with an empty laugh. “So, no chance we’re pretending this never happened, huh?”

 

“Clarke, you had a _baby_ that you never told me about. We’ve been together for two years, we’re _engaged_ for Christ’s sake, and you somehow failed to mention that you have a kid.”

 

_I’ve made it my whole life without a mother. I think I’ll keep managing just fine without one now._

 

She swallowed down the lump in her throat, not wanting to do this here. She wouldn’t even be here at all if she wasn’t so sure she’d probably lose her job after today’s show, but it seemed like a bad idea to also skip out on a sold-out event the station had been planning for months. God knows she’d done enough damage as it was.

 

“I know, okay? I know. But that was….it was a lifetime ago, Finn. And I’ve spent a really long time trying to move on from that life,” she pleaded, willing him to understand. “But I’m really, _really_ sorry that you found out the way you did. That wasn’t fair to you.”

 

He sighed, speaking low enough that no one else could hear them - could hear how fucked up everything really was. Not even 24 hours ago, h. “How are we supposed to build a life together when you won’t….when you won’t trust me and let me in? No matter what I do, you just keep your walls up and keep me away.”

 

Her chin trembled, and she tore her eyes away from his, down at the floor, swallowing his words. Because he was _right_. She hadn’t let him in. She never let anyone in, because she'd learned a long time ago that people always left, or died, or disappointed her.

 

That, or she disappointed them. She'd let her own mother down, she'd probably let down Bellamy, and most of all, she'd sure as hell let Madi down. (That one hurt more than all of them combined.)

 

“You’re right,” she said, sounding broken, and at this point, after everything, _exhausted_. From the day, from keeping up some facade for almost sixteen years now. “I didn’t. I don’t let anyone in, because me, my whole _life_ , it’s all a mess. And I’ve tried _so hard_ to change that and to fix it, but nothing I do changes the fact that I am a fuck-up. I fucked up with you. I fucked up with Madi. She...she hates me, and I can’t even blame her. I told myself I was giving her a better life, but all I did was ruin it and I never even looked back.”

 

She reached into her bag, digging for the ring that she’d had hidden in there, which she’d had to be talked into in the first place. What kind of woman feels _dread_ at the thought of spending the rest of her life with someone who’d been nothing but kind to her, who’d give her the world if only she’d let him in her front door?

 

She wasn't meant to be a mother, and she wasn't meant to be a wife, either. She was meant to be alone.  _He deserved better._

 

“Clarke, please, you don't have to do this, just - “

 

She cut him off, handing the ring back, avoiding his eye again. It was easier this way. Better this way. He'd see that, eventually. Maybe it was a knife to the heart now, but she was saving him, whether he saw that or not.

 

“I think this was a mistake, Finn. You don’t - you shouldn’t want to marry me. I can’t do it, okay, it just - this won’t work. I’m sorry.”

 

She turned on her heel and rushed her way back through the crowd and out the door, not even looking back to see the look on Finn’s face or the life she’d just walked away from, just like she'd done fifteen years ago. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys. you all rock so, so hard. thank you so much to everyone that read, commented, left me kudos. seriously, it made my week and probably my whole month, if we're being honest. keep rocking, stay cool, never change. 
> 
> (and if you feel so inclined to leave another comment, I sure wouldn't hate that.)
> 
> xox


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> probably goes without saying, but I don't own the characters, I'm not a doctor or a lawyer, and I might accidentally goof some stuff up. forgive me.

_“Wasn’t Cinderella supposed to leave a shoe behind when she ran away from the ball?”_

 

 _It’d been barely two months since the untimely death of Jake Griffin, and it was a miracle that Clarke Griffin had left her house for the prom at all. The guilt trips of ‘it’s what he would have wanted, for you to be happy’ might have done it, or maybe it had been a weak moment where she thought, if she tried hard enough, she_ could _be normal, again._

 

_Whatever it had been, she regretted it almost as soon as she had walked into the Hollywood themed auditorium in her long, silky powder blue dress, with small butterfly pins holding up her blonde curls, looking every bit the part of a 2002 Cinderella. There were too many people she didn’t care to see, music she didn’t care to hear playing too loud, and she just didn’t have it in her to pretend anymore like this shit mattered._

 

_She’d given it an hour before stealing Harper’s flask while she was off dancing with her boyfriend Monty, slipping herself out of the auditorium, away from them, from Wells and from everyone else, out the back door of the school and down toward the baseball diamond, praying for some privacy and cursing herself for not driving her own car here tonight. If she was stranded, she might as well have some peace and quiet._

 

_Well, for a minute, anyway._

 

_She propped herself up on her elbows from where she’d been laying flat on top of one of the dugouts, staring up at the stars and feeling good and buzzed by now. She squinted out at the mop of inky black curls that was walking toward her, smug smirk on his face, before huffing and laying back again, closing her eyes._

 

_“And yet, you found me anyway,” she said dryly, though the usual bite was gone. “Not quite the Prince Charming I’d had in mind.”_

 

_She expected something snarky in return, but all she got was a hum in return before hearing him climb up on the dugout roof with her, sitting about a foot away from the top of her head, his legs dangling off the side. She silently offered him the flask, and he reached out to take it, fingers brushing against her pale ones._

 

_“And she drinks hard liquor,” he said, after a swig of Harper’s rum, eyebrows raised. Maybe he was impressed. (She had to remind herself that she didn’t care. Right?) “Brave, Princess.”_

 

_“Oh yeah, I’m a real enigma,” she said, rolling her eyes and taking the flask back, trying not to wince at another swig. Shit, it burned. She glanced back at him, noticing the pale pink bow tie undone and hanging from his neck loosely. “What’s your date going to think about you ditching her to hang out at the baseball field instead? Who was the lucky groupie, anyway? Alie? Roma?”_

 

_He studied her for a second, that cocky smirk growing on his lips, again. “Didn’t realize you were paying such close attention, Princess,” he said, and she rolled her eyes to look away, but nothing could hide the tint of pink on her cheeks. (It was from the booze, okay?) “Roma was a little preoccupied with Murphy last I saw. If she comes up for air, I doubt she’ll give a shit that I ditched.”_

 

_Clarke glanced back at his face, trying to gage if he seemed upset, suddenly unsure of what to say - but he seemed calm. She should’ve figured. When has he ever cared about anything? He was Bellamy Blake. He walked around the halls everyday like he owned the place, like he was untouchable. He didn’t seem to give a shit about anything, and yet, it all looked so easy. He still had friends. He hooked up with anything on two legs, and still girls flung themselves at his feet (not that she was paying attention, thank you very much). Hell, he walked into class with just a pen and a tattered one subject notebook half the time, and yet he was near the top of their class (though, not above her, of course)._

 

_He was infuriating. He was all fire to her ice. They could barely go a week without being at each other’s throats, usually publicly and loudly. They drove each other nuts. She wasn’t sure why she was even tolerating him right now, but she noticed it was the most at ease she’d felt in weeks. Life had been too fucking hard lately for her to question it._

 

_But he did._

 

_“What about you? What brings you out here with a lowly peasant like myself?”_

 

_“I was here first, you ass,” she threw back, but still, the heat wasn’t there, and she sighed. “I guess I just don’t feel like being around anyone I actually like right now.”_

 

_He gave another hum, and silence blanketed over them for a bit. Maybe it was the hour, or the stars, or the booze, but whatever it was, Clarke felt like she could breathe a little better than she’d been able to in almost two months._

 

_Her friends meant well, of course, and she loved them for it, she did. But Wells had been treating her like a porcelain doll, and Harper wasn’t much better. They were all treating her with kid gloves, like they didn’t know what to say or do, like she was some kind of wounded bird they found in the wild. They said all the right things, with the right amount of sympathy, but at this point, she felt like she was letting them down by not getting better, not being normal again and not even really wanting to be._

 

_The fact was, she was just different now. There was Clarke before Jake’s death, and Clarke after Jake’s death, and they weren’t the same person._

 

_Bellamy Blake, however, didn’t expect anything from her. Because they didn’t like each other, not really, maybe they even hated each other. (She knew, deep down, that wasn’t true at all, but appearances were easier than the truth every time.) He wasn’t treating her like some broken thing._

 

_He was just Bellamy, she was just Clarke, and he was exactly what she really needed right now._

 

* * *

 

It’s not like the radio station would really want or expect her today after yesterday’s double natural disaster level fuckery. Even if they did, Finn sure as hell wouldn’t want to sit across from her after she gave his ring back less than 24 hours after getting it, so Clarke felt more than confident in her decision to call out sick today.

 

Besides, she had more important things to do, whether she was wanted or not.

 

Because today was March 3, the day that, sixteen years ago, Clarke delivered all 7 pounds 6 ounces of a healthy, dark haired, screaming baby girl into the world. And she had a small routine for herself on this day every year, waking up early, purposely alone, and lighting a candle on a singular double chocolate cupcake, whispering, “Happy birthday, baby girl,” to no one but herself.

 

But for that moment and that moment alone, once a year, she let herself be a mom, if only for a breath.

 

  
This year, however, called for a new routine.

 

This year, for her sweet sixteenth, Madi was fighting for emancipation at the courthouse, and no matter how everything ended yesterday, Clarke couldn’t just shake it, couldn’t just go back to not knowing what happened to her daughter or where she was now. Because she knew, she knew what her daughter was fighting for, she knew where she lived, her name and what it looked like when those deep brown eyes of hers were welling up with tears. She knew all those things, and there was no going back.

 

So, she was going to that courthouse this afternoon, and just making sure that somehow, this all worked out. Whatever way it worked out.

 

When she found her way into the juvenile courtroom and spotted Madi toward the front, awaiting her own hearing, what she didn’t expect to find was Bellamy sitting toward the back, knee bouncing as he scrolled through his phone. _Of course._

 

“What the hell are you doing here,” she whispered heatedly, huffing as she sat beside him. He looked startled for a moment before narrowing his eyes at her.

 

“You do remember she’s my kid, too, right? We bonded yesterday.”

 

“I’d say you’re both the same age mentally so that makes sense, but I wouldn’t want to insult Madi.”

 

He glared, opening his mouth to retort before they noticed shuffling as Madi’s turn came around. Clarke sat forward now, noting with something like pride how professional for the part she looked today, long brown hair neatly brushed, a headband pushing it back, with a dress, sweater and tights making her look younger than she had yesterday in her combat boots, tattered jeans and army jacket.

 

“Madeline Griffin?”

 

“Present, your honor.”

 

The judge - a gray, middle-aged woman who looked like a no-nonsense commander of her domain - said nothing as she read over Madi’s file, before lowering her glasses and leaning on her elbows, staring dead on at Madi.

 

It didn’t go unnoticed by her parents that she stood her ground, chin held high. _Atta girl, Madi._

 

“Ms. Griffin, it says here you’re seeking emancipation from the state.”

 

“Yes, your honor.”

 

“And yet, I wonder how you intend to support yourself. I don’t see any employment listed here. How do you intend to pay for rent, for food, for your bills?”

 

“I have $3,000 in a savings account, and I plan on getting a job and an apartment as soon as possible now that I’m sixteen, your honor.” She fidgeted, shifting from one foot to another, and a sinking feeling was settling in her stomach.

 

“And who would be your guarantor for the apartment? I cannot fathom what landlord would rent to a high school student without any steady income or a co-signer, Miss Griffin.”

 

“That’s why I’ve been saving, I don’t need a co-signer, I have the money all on my own,” Madi said, willing herself not to show her desperation. She had to be free, this _had_ to work, she’d already told her current foster mother goodbye and to go screw herself (in that order)  - a disastrous beast of a woman, unkind, gruff, and using her for the measly check she got every month. She hadn’t been the first of her kind, but Madi swore that would be her last foster parent, the last shitstorm she’d have to weather.

 

“I’ll cosign!” came two shouts from behind her, simultaneously. She whipped her head around and furrowed her brows when she spotted Clarke and Bellamy now standing, having shot up at the same time. Clarke nudged Bellamy with her elbow, not exactly whispering, “They’d rent to her sooner than they’d rent to _you_.”

 

“Fall off your high horse, Princess,” he grumbled, before the judge slammed her gavel, unamused.

 

“Excuse me, who are you and why are you speaking out in _my_ courtroom?”

 

“They’re my birth parents, your honor,” Madi ground out, glaring their way before turning back to the judge. “Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake.”

 

The judge glanced back down at Madi’s file, “It looks to me like legally, they’re still your parents.”

 

“No, no, I had them sign the papers yesterday, they’re not - “

 

“With no witness there, nor is this document notarized, meaning they are very much still legally your parents, according to the law,” she said, placing her glances down again and leaning forward. _No, please don’t do this to me, please…_

 

“Miss Griffin, I’m going to be honest with you. I have no intention of granting your emancipation. You have no job, no apartment, and nothing to prove to me that you would be successful or safe on your own.”

 

Madi bit her lip and tried to focus on her breathing as she felt her one hope, the one thing keeping her going, disappear before her very eyes. This was _the plan_ , this had been her whole plan for years now. Every penny saved, every new foster home, every trip back to the group home, every fight, everything she’d done, it’d all been okay because this was the plan. To turn sixteen and finally be free.

 

_What now?_

 

“Instead, seeing as legally they still have parental rights, I’m releasing you back into the temporary joint custody of your birth parents, Bellamy Blake and Clarke Griffin.”

 

* * *

 

_They’d been sitting in silence for hours now - or was it only minutes? Maybe the rum was getting to her head, or maybe it was the stars. Whatever it was, she’d stay out here forever like this if she could. The rest of the world could go on without her._

 

_“I’m really sorry about your dad, Clarke,” his voice was softer than she ever remembered hearing it, and something about that, about the fact that he called her by her name for once, made her close her eyes and force herself not to whimper. “I don’t know if you remember, but my sister and I didn’t have a ride home from school one day when we were little, we were just sitting there trying to figure out what to do, and he came right over, introduced himself to us, took us to get ice cream with you and then took us home. I’d see him around town sometimes, he always remembered my name and would ask about Octavia. He was….he seemed like a really great dad.”_

 

_His voice was quiet, like he wasn’t sure why he was saying all this, like Clarke wasn’t even there to listen. But she did. Tears fell from the corner of her eyes, and she swiped at them before he could see. If he noticed, he didn’t comment._

 

_“He was - he was the best,” she whispered back. Another minute or two of silence went by before she heard Bellamy shuffling behind her, and then he hopped off the dugout roof. She figured he’d had enough of her, of this little moment they’d had, whatever it was._

 

_She figured wrong._

 

_“Dance with me,” he said, holding out a hand. She sat up, looking at him like he’d grown another two heads, but he just laughed, gesturing for her to jump. “Come on, one dance. I won’t bite.”_

 

_Real world Clarke would never consider that she’d be here, looking up at stars with Bellamy Blake and accepting an offer to dance, alone out on the baseball diamond like a bad 80s movie, but she didn’t have to be real world Clarke right now. Not just yet. She could let herself live in this bubble for just a little longer, couldn’t she? She deserved that._

 

_She jumped._

 

_And promptly stumbled, her foot catching on her long skirt and almost falling back into the depth of the dugout, before a hand reached out and caught her wrist, his other reaching for her waist and pulling her close. She looked up, realizing their noses were almost touching, and his eyes were focused on the small mole above her lips, and she didn’t stop to think about her racing heart. (She almost fell, it was perfectly normal, okay?)_

 

_He, in turn, just smirked. “And here I thought princesses were more graceful than that.”_

 

_She pushed at his chest with the arm he was still gently holding, and he stepped back with a laugh, looking around in thought for a minute. “Wait here, okay?”_

 

_She watched him jog off toward the parking lot between the field and the school, wondering, for just a minute, if this had all been part of some prank, some way to humiliate her, and she panicked for a moment before she saw him jogging back toward her, a Walkman radio in hand. She quirked an eyebrow, but waited._

 

_He handed her one ear bud, and she had to step close, almost flush to his chest, while he stuck the other in his ear, searching for a minute through stations before he found a song clear enough for them to dance to - Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, as if she’d chosen it herself - putting his hands on her wait, one still holding the Walkman, and quirking an eyebrow at her when she didn’t move._

 

_“You have danced before, haven’t you?”_

 

_She rolled her eyes, putting her arms around his neck and daring to look in his eyes again, brown eyes meeting her crystal blues. They swayed softly, and Clarke felt cool grass beneath her toes, her shoes long since discarded on the field. Her heart was pounding, but despite that, despite being pressed close enough to Bellamy Blake to smell his cologne and to make out the splash of freckles across his nose, this was the most comfortable and at peace she’d felt in ages._

_  
_ _She caught him humming along to the chorus, and couldn’t help the smile that stretched on her face, hurting the muscles that had barely been used lately. It felt_ good _. “Bellamy Blake, are you a Goo Goo Dolls fan?!”_

 

_“Shut up, I have a little sister,” he huffed, but there was a smirk on his lips too, and she giggled. (He didn’t think he’d ever heard Clarke Griffin giggle, and he very much wanted to hear it again and again.)_

 

_“Mhmmmm, whatever you say.”_

 

_“It’s not like I know all the lyrics, okay….”_

 

_“Sure, Bell, whatever you say.” (The nickname slipped past her lips as naturally as her own breath, and he tried not to show that it was the best thing he’d ever heard, even better than her laugh.)_

 

_“And sooner or later it’s over,” he suddenly sang lightly, coy smile on his face._

 

_“Oh, god, please no - “_

 

_“I just don’t want to miss you tonight…”_

 

_“Make it stop, please!”_

 

_He got louder, yelling at this point, his smile widened, and God, his voice was really not great, but she couldn’t stop the laughter bubbling through her, wracking her body, almost to the point of tears._

 

_“And I don’t want the world to see me, cause I don’t think that they’d understand. When everything’s made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am.”_

 

_Even years later, she wouldn’t be able to tell you what came over her. Maybe it was the fact that she felt something close to happy for the first time in a long time, or the way the moonlight hit them, or the barely there buzz they still had, but whatever it was, it made her lean in and kiss his lips, taking him by surprise, before she pulled back, a putting a hand to her own lips like she’d  felt a shock surge to them._

 

_“I, uh….just needed to get you to stop singing before my ears started bleeding,” she mumbled out, a little breathless._

 

_His eyes shifted from surprised to something else she couldn’t quite read, and he reached out, his thumb brushing at her bottom lip. “Is that so?”_

 

_“Yeah, I don’t know if anyone has told you, but you’re a really terrible - “ This time, it was her turn to be surprised when he surged forward hungrily, his hand now holding her jaw and her own coming to tangle in his long, soft curls, which felt exactly like she’d imagined (not that she’d ever imagined this, of course)._

 

_Clarke wasn’t exactly innocent. She’d kissed boys before (even more girls), and she’d gone much further than that with Niylah Post. Still, she’d never actually slept with a guy before, but whatever this energy was between her and Bellamy, it was like she was someone else entirely. Someone who didn’t stop to think and play out every detail before it could even happen._

 

_She reached out for his belt, and he pulled back, looking at her face more earnestly than he ever had before, his lips slightly swollen. “Clarke, are you sure?”_

 

_He was giving her an out, letting her decide how this played out, and maybe real world Clarke would push him away and tell him this was a mistake (real world Clarke would’ve never even gone this far to begin with), but this Clarke, here and now, was sure._

 

_She nodded. “Please, Bellamy,” she whispered, and that was all it took for his eyes to darken and for him to surge back toward her lips, and for her to melt right back into this moment and this version of them that she never wanted to leave behind._

 

* * *

 

“Madi, wait - hey, Madi, _please,”_ Clarke called out as her and Bellamy followed Madi outside of the courthouse, down the steps. The girl’s arms were crossed in front of her, and she didn’t turn back, couldn’t _believe_ the way her day was turning out, exactly opposite of how she’d hoped for.

 

“Maybe if you’d held it together inside…” Bellamy started, and Clarke stopped in her tracks, whipping her head around to him.

 

“Are you kidding me? I should’ve kept it together? _Me?!_ God, you really are the same pain in the ass you were in high school!”

 

“Pot kettle, Princess,” he snarled, stepping closer. “Good to see you’re still looking down on the rest of the world from your fucking ivory tower - “

 

“Oh my _God_ , do you two ever stop?” Madi finally said, exasperated as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She laughed humorlessly, “I cannot _believe_ a judge actually thought you two taking care of me would be a better option than me taking care of myself!”

 

“Look, Madi, I know this isn’t how you wanted things to go,” Bellamy started, fight with Clarke forgotten.

 

“Really, you picked up on that, huh.”

 

“But maybe you could just give us a chance,” Clarke said, her eyes a little desperate at this point. And despite the fact that no more than sixty seconds ago they were at each other’s throats, Bellamy nodded beside her, suddenly a unit or some shit like that - Madi was starting to wonder if they really were absolutely batshit crazy.

 

“What, like the one you never gave me?” she bit back, knowing it was an unfair, low - lowest - blow. The looks on both their faces confirmed that much, with Clarke looking like she was about to break into a million pieces, and Bellamy looking down at the ground, not knowing what to say. “Yeah, no thanks.”

 

“That’s not fair,” Clarke finally said, not wanting to lose her patience with the girl, but desperately wanting -  _needing -_  her to just understand that they’d never meant for her life to be like this, for any of this. “We weren’t ready back then, but that was a long time ago, and now...now we could do this, okay? Maybe there’s a reason this all worked out this way. Can’t we at least _try_ to make this work?”

 

Madi seemed to think about it for a second, wanting, deep down, nothing more. Every kid in the system dreamed of this, after all. Their parents coming back, not being total pieces of shit and wanting something to do with their kid, _finally._

 

But she’d spent too long building up her walls, toughening up her skin, and too long telling herself to quit dreaming. Things that seemed to be too good to be true usually were, and she wasn’t used to good things to begin with. Her mind wouldn’t let her have this.

 

_They’re only doing this because of the judge, they’ll change their minds again, they’ll give you up again, you don’t even know them. They gave you up once, don’t give them the chance to do it again, Madi, you know better._

 

She shook her head. 

 

“Where are you gonna go?” Bellamy asked, wishing, beyond hope, he could make her want to be with them, but knowing that wasn't possible. They couldn't change the past sixteen years. They couldn't change her life. They'd made their beds. 

 

She tossed her arms up in the air as she started walking away down the sidewalk, “To beg my social worker to clear this shit up, I don’t know. You two should be thanking me. You didn’t want to be parents anyway. You’re welcome!”

 

Everything in Clarke screamed at her to go chase her down, but she knew. She knew, on some level, she deserved this. Even if she could go back in time, given the chance, she’d make the same choice (but make damn sure that home was secure and found before leaving her in the hospital). But she knew Madi’s anger at them was real and valid, because for sixteen years, she’d lived thinking she wasn’t wanted by anyone in this world.

 

Whether or not it was true (God, it was so far from being true), Clarke couldn’t change that.

 

“Come on, Princess,” Bellamy said, sounding as defeated and exhausted as she felt in her bones. “I think we deserve a drink.”

 

* * *

 

 _Clarke had spent a lifetime priding herself on not being_ that girl _. She wasn’t naive, she wasn’t a fool, and she always used her head first, heart second._

 

_She wasn’t an idiot, okay?_

 

_But still, she’d sworn something had changed on that baseball field that night with her and Bellamy. She wasn’t a fool who thought that giving a boy her virginity meant absolutely everything, but a small part of her thought that might’ve meant something, and that the dancing, the smiles, the stars, all of it might have meant something._

 

_And yet, when she saw him two days later making out with Roma, she knew she’d been a fool. He looked up, made eye contact with her, and something like guilt maybe, or embarrassment maybe, flashed in his eyes before he turned back to Roma’s face, smiling that smirk of his as she leaned back in for another kiss._

 

_Clarke hurried off in the other direction, blinking back angry tears and promising herself she’d never let this happen ever again, hell, she'd never even speak to Bellamy Blake ever again, because fuck him._

 

_Except, of course, for the whole issue, a few weeks later, when she realized her boobs were sore, she was nauseous pretty much goddamn always and her period was late._

 

_Seven at home pregnancy tests and a few hours of tears and vomit later, she knew. She knew she was pregnant, she knew Bellamy Blake was the father, and she knew she was well and truly fucked, because they’d just graduated high school a month ago, she was supposed to be off to Yale in the fall, and she’d promised herself that Bellamy Blake was more or less dead to her._

 

_(God, what would her father say?)_

 

_She told Wells first, because this secret was too heavy to keep to herself, because she needed to tell someone her world was fucking ending and she’d ruined everything thanks to one stupid, cliched prom night decision, and she knew once she told Abby, she’d be disowned most likely, possibly murdered._

 

_She wasn’t sure who she was more scared to tell, honestly. Her mother or the baby’s father._

 

_Wells, however, had convinced her that she needed to tell Bellamy next, that despite him being the world’s biggest asshole, he deserved to know. What she did with her body was her choice, but...Bellamy should know._

 

_(She hated how goddamn right Wells was pretty much goddamn always.)_

 

_Which brought her to the present, waiting by his truck outside of the restaurant Wells said he was working some shifts at this summer (how he found out, she didn’t ask, but appreciated nonetheless). She didn’t want to bombard him at his house, or barge in on him at work, but she didn’t have his number, and probably would’ve shredded it up even if she did._

 

_He finally came out around 10pm, face glistening with sweat and shoulders tense, before he stopped in his tracks, noticing her by his truck._

 

_“Never thought I'd see you on this side of town, Princess. You back for round two?” he asked, that old fire and spit back in his words as he came right up to the driver’s side door, reaching for the handle. She bit her tongue, taking a breath in through her nose, resisting the temptation to fight right back because she was here for one reason, and she needed to just fucking say it._

 

_“We need to talk.”_

 

_He looked at her curiously, letting his hand drop from the truck handle and crossing his arms over his chest (she ignored how it made his arms bulge a bit, how broad his chest looked beneath his arms, because she’d made that mistake once and once only). “Alright….talk.”_

 

_No use in beating around the bush. “I’m pregnant.”_

 

_Were she a petty person, she might take pleasure in the way his face dropped, face paling, the way his whole face and body language seemed to change as he processed the bomb she’d just dropped on him. If she was a petty girl, she’d gloat that this is what he got for tricking her into thinking he was a genuine person capable of genuine feelings._

_  
_ _But the fact was, she wasn’t a petty person, just a scared girl who’d made a mistake with a boy with freckles like constellations and a cocky smile._

 

_“You’re pregnant,” he repeated, more for himself than her. She nodded, anyway. “Fuck….shit, Clarke. You’re pregnant. And it’s...it’s mine?”_

 

_“Yes, asshole,” she bit back, glaring at him. “Being that you’re the only person I’ve ever slept with, it’s yours.”_

 

_He ran his hands through his hair roughly, tugging at his curls before running his hands over his face. How the fuck had he let this happen? He was working three jobs this summer just to support him and Octavia, since Aurora had taken off again days before his graduation and showed no signs of coming back any time soon. He could barely scrape by as it was, and this life was what he was destined for. He was no prince, and he sure as hell, at 18, was not ready to be a Dad._

 

_Hell, he wasn’t even ready for the life he already had, nevermind this. Fuck._

 

_He looked back at Clarke, who was biting her lip now, a crease between her furrowed brows. “What do you want to do?” he asked, his voice low, quiet, so sincere that it hurt, reminding her of that night, the one time she felt like she really saw Bellamy Blake._

 

_“I don’t know, yet,” she whispered back, voice breaking a little. “I don’t know what to do, Bellamy.”_

 

_He wanted, God he wanted more than anything, to reach out and hold her, because he did this to her. Him, the lowly peasant boy from the wrong side of the tracks, had kidded himself for a night under the stars, thinking him and Clarke Griffin had any business being together. Her world was too different, too good. His life was a trouble-making little sister and an addict, barely there mother. He had nothing to offer her, and she was supposed to go off to her Ivy League school, become a doctor, and leave memories like the baseball field, like him, far behind._

 

_It wasn’t fair, but he’d learned life wasn’t fair a long time ago, the first time his mother had taken off without him and his baby sister, leaving for four days without so much as a $20 for food or a word on when she’d be back. He was seven._

 

_He stepped toward the truck and turned around, leaning back against it, right beside her, close enough that their arms were touching. He let out a heavy sigh._

 

_“Clarke, whatever you decide...it’s your decision. I’m here, okay?”_

 

_She let her head fall back with a thud, eyes closed, and he ignored the tear trailing down her cheek. “Can we figure it out later?”_

 

* * *

 

 If you had told Clarke that she’d ever be sitting in Bellamy Blake’s apartment, willingly, alone with him no less, she’d have told you maybe, maybe when pigs fly, but probably still not then, either.

 

And yet, some days called for a stiff drink (the bartender title came in handy) and someone you didn’t actually like. And Bellamy knew how to make a fantastic gin and tonic.

 

“We made the right choice, you know,” he said, pouring her a third drink now (himself, he was working his way through some whiskey, neat). “We were just kids, Clarke.”

 

“I know that,” she sighed, immediately taking a hefty sip as soon as he’d slid it to her. “But I just...she _hates_ us, Bellamy.”

 

“She doesn’t hate us,” he answered, leaning his elbows on the island in his kitchen and turning his head toward her, trying to get her to listen. She just quirked an eyebrow at him. “She doesn’t. She might think she does, and maybe a tiny part of her does, but more than anything, she’s just mad. Things didn’t work out for her today, and she’s a teenager. And a Blake. She was just lashing out.”

 

“I don’t know,” she said, tracing her finger along the rim of her glass. “If I had lived the way she did, I’d probably hate us too.”

 

He reached out to stop her hand from it’s motions, trying to get her to look at him. “You’re not one of the bad guys, Clarke. Stop telling yourself you are.”

 

She looked down at their hands, and up into his eyes, getting lost in them for a minute and feeling like she was seventeen again, barefoot in a pretty dress on a baseball field with a cute boy who made her feel alive. She shook herself out of the memory, pulling her hand back and picking up the glass, taking another sip.

 

“Maybe I am, though. I kind of screw everything up. Madi. My relationship with Finn. I’m having a banner week, if you haven’t noticed,” her laugh was empty. “Do you know I was engaged for a minute there? Until he found out I had a baby I never told him about.”

 

He ignored the pit in his stomach when he heard she’d been _engaged_ , to that smug looking Finn Collins no less, but that wasn’t the point right now, and besides, what did he care? He didn’t. ( _Real convincing, Blake._ )

 

“Well, if you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you,” he said, tossing back the rest of his own whiskey. He set the glass down, noticing her staring at him again. Maybe she’d needed to hear those words, or maybe he had. Lord knows he carried guilt by the tons, he’d screwed up more than he could ever fix, but right now, she needed to hear those words more.

 

“We did what we had to do, Clarke. We made that decision. Together. You don’t have to bear it alone.”

 

He was leaning closer - when had that happened - and somewhere along the way, she’d leaned in, too, and they were a breath apart, some magnetic force pulling them together, and maybe it was the drinks, or the lighting, or the emotional as all hell week they were having, the only two people who could possibly understand each other in this moment. Maybe it was some long unforgotten memory of a boy and a girl and a song on prom night...

 

She surged forward, kissing him and practically throwing herself into his lap, but unlike teenage Bellamy, this Bellamy was ready to catch her, hands reaching for her blonde curls, hers placed at his waist and the back of his neck, like this was the last kiss either of them would ever have. She reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head, and he let out a low growl, kissing down her jawline, down her smooth, porcelain neck.

 

“Bell,” she gasped out, and that was all it took.

 

He reached down, grabbing her thighs and pulling her legs around his waist, walking them toward the wall and pulling her shirt over her head, trailing kisses down over her breasts before pulling one bra strap down, sucking her nipple into his mouth and pulling gently with his teeth.

 

Her hips grinded against his, skirt hiked around his waist, and it took everything in him not to lose himself then and there. She reached for his head, pulling him up to eye level, her pupils blown wide, lips red and swollen, chest heaving.

 

He’d never seen anything quite so beautiful in his entire life.

 

“Bedroom. _Now._ ”

 

(After all, Clarke Griffin never could keep a promise to herself when it came to staying away from Bellamy Blake.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all are the absolute best, I seriously appreciate all the feedback more than I can say! I'm so glad you guys are liking this. if you feel so inclined, find me over on tumblr (banrionrua) and come flail over bellarke and season 5 with me. x


	4. Chapter 4

Clarke was by no means a morning person, and yet, there were a few, short, precious moments every morning, before she was fully awake, that she occasionally basked in, before the noise of the day, before anyone expected anything of her, before she had to put on the Clarke Griffin show. She could just _be_ , for a few minutes, anyway, with her eyes closed and her body still warm and still.

 

She cuddled in further to the firm chest she was laying half on top of, slowly moving her left leg up and down the calf below hers, ignoring the sunshine coming through the curtains across the room and just letting herself slowly -

 

“Not sure I have round three in me just yet, Princess,” a gravelly voice rumbled below her, and she’s not sure she’s ever shot up out of bed so quickly in her life. Her eyes flew open and she pushed herself up, staring down at a bleary-eyed, groggy Bellamy Blake, whose mussed up sex hair and half-asleep grin were _not_ distractingly good looking, _at all._ Not at all.

 

_Oh, fuck, what did you do, Clarke…._

 

“Three? We didn’t - I mean - oh, _fuck_ ,” she said, putting a hand to her head and finally registering the pounding there from last night’s too many drinks, on top of the disaster she’d just woken up to.

 

_Her eyes were shut tightly, one hand wound into the sheets at her side and one in his thick curls between her legs, lapping at her throbbing cunt. Her hips were jerking into his movements, one of his fingers crooked inside of her as his mouth moved to her clit, tongue swirling around the nub before sucking, and he had to use his other arm to hold her hips down while she screamed out, “Oh, God, Bellamy…”_

 

_She tugged at his curls, pushing herself up to look at him as he came up for air, his pupils blown wide, his chin slick with her juices. “I need you. Inside me. Now.” She growled it, primal and all need. He practically answered with his own growl, quickly crawling up to her mouth, capturing it with his own, and she could taste herself on his tongue -_

 

_He pushed inside her, sheathing himself almost completely in one swift motion, and she screamed out again, biting on his shoulder as he gave her a minute to stretch to his size. She pulled her mouth off his shoulder, looking him in the eyes, and the look she found him giving her back was so intense, it nearly knocked the wind out of her._

 

_“Fuck me, Bell,” she whispered, and it was all he needed. He pulled nearly all the way out before snapping his hips back into her again and again, hiking one of her legs higher around his waist…._

 

She looked down, at least realizing that she had a tee shirt on - a Rage Against The Machine concert tee that was smelled musky like Bellamy, but she was grateful for something, considering she was wearing _nothing_ else.

 

“Oh, we did. Twice,” he said smugly, that cocky grin plastered on his all too punchable face right now, hands now behind his head.

 

She glared at him before flinging the sheets off of her, pulling the tee shirt down to cover her business while she looked around the room - a glorified boy’s dorm room, with exposed brick, a hodge-podge of mismatched furniture and a few band posters - searching for her underwear, dress and shoes. Each item was flung to different sides of the room, like they’d been in some wild, passionate craze to be naked as fast as possible. (Which was entirely accurate.)

 

_This isn’t happening._

 

She spotted her lace panties laying on a shelf of his bookcase, and snatched them, shimmying them on quickly and trying to wrap her head around the fact that she’d _slept with Bellamy Blake_ _again_ like some horny, naive, _stupid_ teenager.

 

“You’re on the pill, right?”

 

She whipped her head around, glaring even harder than before, if possible. “That’s something you usually ask before you trick women into your bed, asshole,” she spat, finding her dress on the floor near his laundry basket and quickly pulling it up over her hips, throwing his stupid tee shirt at him in the process. “Don’t worry, I so do not plan on popping out any more of your spawn, Blake.”

 

" _Tricked_ you into my bed?” _That is what he latched on to?_ She huffed as she spotted one of her heels, slipping it on her right foot as she looked around for it’s twin. “Oh, please, Griffin, you were all over me. And you certainly had no complaints during. In fact, I’d define you screaming my name repeatedly as the oppos - “

 

“Oh my God, shut the fuck up,” she said, gritting her teeth. “This? _Never happened.”_

 

“Touchy, touchy,” he said, scooting himself into a sitting position. She tore her eyes away from his infuriating, perfectly toned, tan abs, because that was so not the point right now, and the way the sheets pooled at his hips and -

 

_Jesus Christ, get it together, you loathe the man._

 

She finally spotted her other shoe, furiously pulling it on and reaching behind her, trying to zip up her dress, fuck trying to find her bra at this point - she needed to get out of here like….well, she never should have been here at all, really.

 

“Need help with that?” an amused voice teased from the bed, and her semi-permanent glare rounded on him again. “I’m just trying to be polite!”

 

“No, I definitely do not need your help, I actually need you to stop _talking_ at all so I can start pretending this whole thing never happened and I actually fell and whacked my head yesterday and am now - “

 

“Having sex dreams about the guy you lost your virginity to in high school?”

 

“Having nightmares about the asshole from high school who peaked at seventeen and still lives like one, I mean Jesus, at least frame your fucking posters, Blake, it’s the easiest way to pretend you’re somewhat of an adult.” She was flustered and rambling and her head was pounding and if she could just find her purse, she could get out of here…

 

“You’re really not a morning person, huh?”

 

She wasn’t, but she wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction. “Can’t say waking up beside the guy who knocked me up in high school and basically all but disappeared after is my favorite way to start the day, no.” Something like hurt flashed across his face for a second, but she was on a roll. “This is not me, okay? This was a _mistake._ I don’t do shit like this. I have - Finn, and I’m not that kind of girl. We were - we were just wasted and it was a very emotional day yesterday and we….we got caught up, so let’s just never, _ever_ mention this, again.”

 

The teasing, easy smirk on his face was gone when she looked back at him again, and now his jaw was clenched, though he tried not to let it show. She couldn’t read him, and that scared her, a little.

 

“Don’t worry, Clarke,” he said, the lightness gone in his voice. “It never happened. I hear you loud and clear.”

 

She faltered at that, for a fraction of a second. He didn’t usually give in that easily, and she suddenly felt a pang of something like guilt hit her. He hadn’t done anything wrong, she didn’t even know half the time why she hated him so goddamn much, she just knew that she didn’t like looking at herself too closely and when she was around him, she couldn’t escape herself, the real Clarke Griffin.

 

She reached out, grabbing the handle to his bedroom door and letting herself out the back steps, missing bra forgotten and trying to push Bellamy’s face far from her mind.

 

She’d made it all of twenty steps before she tripped over a blanket covered lump on the ground in front of the bar, which she quickly registered as a person and was profusely apologizing before -

 

“Ow,” a voice grumbled, and Clarke froze.

 

“Madi?”

 

The lump shifted upward and there was her daughter, covered in a couple of fleece blankets, a duffel bag at her feet, and beanie covering her head and ears. Still, the tip of her nose was red, and another wave of guilt hit Clarke. “Jesus, Madi, what are you doing out here? Have you been out here all night?”

 

The girl sat up, pulling the fleece blankets tighter around her. “Turns out I probably should’ve waited ‘til after the hearing to tell my foster mom to suck it,” she said nonchalantly, shrugging her shoulders as if she hadn’t just admitted to spending the night _on the street._ “The place was already closed by the time I got here. I figured I’d wait for Bellamy to wake up.”

 

It was then that she took in Clarke’s appearance - mussed hair (despite her best efforts), mascara smudged under her eyes, and the same clothes from yesterday. She narrowed her eyes, “God, don’t you two ever learn?”

 

Clarke’s cheeks flushed tomato red, her eyes finding their way to the ground, but she said nothing in return. _Apparently not._ She gave it a minute before slowly walking over to where Madi sat, slowly easing herself down the wall behind her and on the ground beside her daughter, with a foot or so between them, curling her bare legs underneath her and pulling her skirt down.

 

Madi glanced at her mother, for the first time really letting herself get a good look at her, short blonde waves, the mole above her pink lips, the clear, crystal blue eyes. She had her mom’s nose, she could tell now, small and cute. Her features and coloring may look mostly Blake, but she could see now that the shape of her face, the set of her brows - that was all Clarke, too.

 

“Is it really that bad?”

 

“Sleeping on the sidewalk?”

 

“No, your foster parents? The system?” Clarke finally asked, quietly, nervous to know the answer. Madi gave her a weak, half-smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She wasn’t going to lie.

 

“Worse.”

 

She’d spent the past couple of days reliving a whole lot of hurt and pain, thanks to meeting her birth parents. She hadn’t expected that. She’d thought she’d been _fine_ , thought she’d learned how to tamper it all down, file it away and never let it make her feel small again, but she’d been wrong. Because they weren’t bad people. They weren’t the villains she’d imagined in her head, sometimes, or the monsters it would be easier for them to be.

 

They were good, nice people who’d made a mistake they were too young to handle. They’d had to make an impossible choice.

 

It didn’t fix everything, it didn’t change the hell that had been her life, and it didn’t really make the hurt disappear, but she _got it._ She did.

 

She leaned a little closer to Clarke, letting herself open up, just a little. She was trying. “But I’m okay, Clarke. I survived. And I’ll keep surviving. I learned to accept a long time ago that I’m just not someone who gets to have a family. It’s okay.”

 

Clarke wasn’t sure what hurt her heart more - that her daughter was comforting _her_ for doing this to her, or that she had seen so much more in her young life than most people had in a lifetime.

 

Maybe she couldn’t change the past - but she could change _now._

 

“You could, you know,” she said softly, reaching out for Madi’s hand, holding it gently. She considered it a victory that she didn’t pull away, and squeezed it. “You could have a family. I know...I know the past few days have been _a lot_ , and I know we’re not perfect, but we could _try._ If you’d let us. We weren’t ready back then, but, this all - everything brought us back together, and I would love another chance. I probably won’t always get it right, I’m kind of a shit cook and I’m messy and let laundry pile up way too long, but I’d...I’d really like to give this a try. I’d work on it all. For you.”

 

_Another chance to get this right. Another chance to be your mom._

 

Clarke’s heart was pounding, laying herself more on the line than she really ever had in her life, and Madi’s was doing much the same, finally hearing words she’d always dreamt of hearing but never in a million years imagined what it’d be like to actually get that dream. She didn’t trust good things. If it seemed too good to be true, it usually was.

 

_And yet…_

 

“How bad of a cook, exactly?”

 

Clarke couldn’t help it. She wrapped Madi in a warm hug, holding her close and willing herself not to squeal or cry.

 

Madi, for once in her life, let herself melt into it. Maybe this wouldn’t last for long, maybe it’d be a fucking disaster, but she’d survived more than a few disasters in her time.

 

(And maybe, just maybe, the universe would give her this for good.)

 

* * *

 

They packed Madi’s few belongings into Clarke’s Prius, still parked outside the bar, and she told Clarke to go shower, change, figure her shit out, which Clarke reluctantly agreed to once Madi promised to call her when she needed a ride home.

 

_Home._

 

Still, there was one more person she needed to talk to. Probably to apologize to, if she was being honest with herself. One more person she was hoping would be on board with this plan of theirs.

 

(Clarke, of course, had offered to stay, but Madi was sixteen, not six. She knew a walk of shame when she saw one, even when that walk was interrupted by tripping over her. She’d had enough of a morning as it was, Madi figured.)

 

She rang the buzzer a few times before he finally answered, bedraggled and grumpier looking than he had been the last time she'd rang his doorbell in the early morning hours. (She was immediately confident in her decision to tell Clarke to go home.)

 

“Madi, hi,” he said, clearly taken aback, like he'd been expecting someone else. He glanced around her for a second, before letting her in, clearly confused but apprehensive still, just like Clarke had been. “What are you doing here?”

 

“I’ve been here all night, actually,” she said, gesturing her thumb toward the door. “Sort of spent the night on your sidewalk. All in all, it’s pretty good sidewalk. Didn’t have to fight any bums over it. I’d give it a 9 out of 10 on Yelp.”

 

He looked like he was about to drop dead of a heart attack right there and then in front of her. It was a little endearing, really. She wasn't used to someone giving that much of a shit where she slept. “You - you _what?”_

 

She waved a hand, dismissing it, and she could tell from his face that everything was screaming at him to fight back and to freak out, but he stopped himself. She walked over to one of the barstools, scooting her way onto it, and watched as he debated with himself what to do before he landed on just moving his hands into the pockets of his grey sweatpants, looking so unsure.

 

She didn’t know him very well yet, but she knew that wasn’t usual for him, that he wasn’t usually this _awkward_.

 

“I also saw Clarke.” She watched the muscles of his jaw clench, and noted that away in the running tally of their clear unresolved sexual romantic tension shit, saving it away for later. “We, uh...we had a really good talk, actually.”

 

He seemed to soften at that. “Are you okay? After everything yesterday, I mean. I’m really sorry things didn’t go the way you wanted them to, and I know...I know we probably didn’t help. Afterward.”

 

She nodded, slowly. “I’m okay, yeah. Honestly, it was just a hell of a day, and I - I might have lashed out at you guys, a little.”

 

He smirked at that, and some of the nerves wrapped tight around her heart loosened. She could breathe easier. “Pretty sure you get that from me. Blakes can be pretty temperamental.”

 

She ignored the skip of her heart at that. _You get that from me._ Her _dad_. She finally knew who he was, and she was so like him, already, and….

 

She liked that.

 

“What I probably should have said was...thank you for coming to the hearing. Really. Even if you weren’t exactly...expecting what happened, any more than I was.”

 

This time, he was the one reading the nerves rolling off of her, noticing again the way she bit her lip, and how her nails dug into her other fingers, picking at the skin anxiously.

 

_She’s trying to get a read on me._

 

The thing was, Bellamy Blake had always been good with kids. (Stemmed mostly from the fact that he’d practically raised one when he was still one, himself.) He _liked_ kids. And he’d always known, someday in the far and distant future, he’d want some of his own, whenever he had his life together. It was easier to dream about things like that when he was younger, because even though life had been a bit of a bitch, it was easy when you were seventeen to think it had to all change someday, and that life somehow would pay you back for all the painful parts.

 

It hadn’t exactly worked that way. He’d gotten Clarke pregnant in the back of his truck on prom night, he'd found his Mom dead from an overdose soon after, and he'd had to put off college to take care of Octavia, a responsibility he was barely granted in the first place. Somewhere along the way, his high school coach, Marcus Kane, had reached out, with a plan to open a bar that he’d like Bellamy to run, which was more than a kid like him probably should have dreamed of (and God, he was grateful, really), but still.

 

It wasn’t exactly the bright and shiny life he’d stupidly hoped for, once upon a time. He was a bachelor living above a bar that he worked at (struggling to keep afloat, in all honesty) with his best friends, sure, but...that was all his life was, now. Octavia was married to Lincoln now, she didn’t need him, and his Mom was long gone, no longer needing him, either.

 

No wife, no kids, no college degrees that he’d once longed for. None of it.

 

(Deep down, he wasn’t sure he’d ever done anything at all that had even meant anything, wasn’t sure he meant anything if he wasn’t taking care of someone else, and that scared him shitless.)

 

 _And yet..._ life was giving him a second chance, it seemed.

 

He moved over to the barstool beside her, easing himself onto it and leaning his forearms on the bar in front of him. “Maybe not, but...doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy about it,” he said, and her eyes flickered at that, her teeth releasing her bottom lip. “Scared shitless, too, but... _happy_. I’d really like the chance to be your dad, if that’s….if that’s okay with you. If that’s what you want.”

 

She ducked her head, but he caught the smile blossoming on her face, and his lips stretched into one of his own.

 

“Yeah,” she said, nodding, and her smile nearly blinded him when she finally looked up. Hope bloomed in his chest. _His daughter wanted him to be part of her life_. “Yeah, I think that’d be okay with me.”

 

* * *

 

Clarke’s knee bounced as she stood outside of the radio station later that afternoon, leaned against Finn’s car, arms crossed and stomach a bundle of nerves. After stopping home after her talk with Madi, showering, getting into fresh clothes and finally getting some coffee in her, she’d felt rejuvenated. Like maybe her life could still have a chance at coming back together, like it didn’t have to be such a mess.

 

Like maybe she could actually do this.

 

Besides, she owed Finn more than their last conversation. She couldn’t leave it like that. Maybe she didn’t have to leave it at all. She’d meant what she’d said to Madi about having a family this morning, and maybe Finn could fit into that picture too, if he’d have them.

 

She loved him, after all. It could be that simple if she let it, couldn’t it be?

 

(A flash of dark curls and freckles burst through her mind. She pushed it back.)

 

She spotted him before he spotted her, and she noted the pause in his steps when his eyes landed on her. She raised her hand in a small wave, praying this would go okay. _Just hear me out, please..._

 

“You still have a job here, you know. You could’ve come inside,” he said when he finally reached her.

 

She shrugged a little, trying (and failing) to play it cool. “Figured it’d be better to wait out here, away from the bosses, in case you wanted to tell me I’m the world’s biggest asshole. Which, by the way, I deserve.”

 

He frowned, sighing. “I don’t think you’re an asshole, Clarke.”

 

“Maybe just a jerk then,” she tried to joke, but it was true. She’d been emotional and overwhelmed by everything, so in the moment, she hadn’t exactly been the best version of herself. She stood by a lot of what she said - she was a little broken, and messy, and hard to handle.

 

But she’d forgotten, for a second, that she was no coward. Clarke Griffin didn’t give up easily. 

 

“How have you been?” he asked, and there it was, one of the things she loved most about him. He was sweet, and he _cared_ , really and truly cared. He shouldn’t be asking her how she was doing, after everything, and yet, here he was, genuinely wanting to know. 

 

“I’m better now,” she said. “It’s sort of a long story, but...the court didn’t grant Madi emancipation. They ended up giving me and Bellamy joint custody, since we’re still legally her parents. She was...she was pissed at first, but we talked this morning, and we’re giving this a shot.”

 

She wasn’t able to help the smile on her face at that. Was she terrified? Absolutely. But she was _happy_.

 

“Wow. Clarke, that’s...that’s huge,” he said, letting out a puff of air. “Wow.”

 

“Yeah. Wow,” she repeated, with a small laugh. She worried her bottom lip for a second, taking in a deep breath. “Anyway, it got me thinking about family, y’know, and what I want that to look like. It got me thinking about us.”

 

She took a half step closer to him, and then another. He didn't step away. “Finn, I’m so sorry for how I reacted the other night. I was just...overwhelmed, and so much happened all at once, I just - “

 

“Pulled a Clarke and freaked out? Pulled away?” he offered, and she’d be worried, if she couldn’t tell the hint of a smirk on his face.

 

“I wasn’t wrong about everything I said, though. I should’ve told you about Madi a long time ago. And I am...messy and damaged, okay? So, I got scared. But it didn’t mean I didn’t want everything with you. I did - I _do_ want to be with you, Finn. I love you,” she said, swallowing the lump rising in her throat. She needed to get this out, needed to at least try to fix all of this.

 

“I know I probably lost my chance, but...I still want that, if you do. I want you to be part of our little family.”

 

He didn’t say anything at first, just reaching out, wiping a stray tear from her cheek with the back of his knuckles, gently. He was always soft with her. She wondered if she’d said too much, hoped for too much, when another beat when by and he said nothing, _stupid Clarke, you can’t just give his ring back and then expect -_

 

He brushed his hand back through her hair, cradling her jaw gently, and brought her lips to his, kissing her warmly, like he was coming home.

 

She tried not to whimper when he pulled back, a breath away and his eyes bored into hers. “Clarke, are you sure?”

 

_(She reached for his belt, and he pulled back...“Clarke, are you sure?” … “Please, Bellamy.”)_

 

She nodded, leaning back in and kissing him again, reminding herself that this was her dream coming true.

 

(She scolded herself for noticing that his lips didn’t feel anything like Bellamy’s had.)

 

* * *

 

The first thing she’d have to buy Madi this week was a cell phone, so that she could call her and tell her when she was outside of Bellamy’s to pick her up, and for her to meet her out there, rather than Clarke having to see him face-to-face.

 

_Jesus, Clarke, stop being a child. You’re a grown woman. He’s the father of your daughter. You can do this._

 

She climbed back up the steps to the apartment door above the bar that she’d fled from just this morning, reminding herself that last night was a mistake, that she was only human, and since then she’d gotten some much needed perspective and it didn’t _mean_ anything, they were two adults who could co-parent without it being weird -

 

He opened the door as soon as she knocked once, their eyes locking, and her mouth went dry.

 

“Hey, Clarke,” Madi said from behind him, and she glanced over to the teenager over Bellamy's shoulder, finding her sitting at the island, a half eaten plate of spaghetti in front of her. “Bellamy just made dinner. At least we know I won’t completely starve to death between the two of you.”

 

She cracked a smile at that, and Bellamy opened the door further, letting her inside. “Well, thank God for Bellamy,” she said, her eyes flitting over to his.

 

_“Can’t say waking up beside the guy who knocked me up in high school and basically all but disappeared after is my favorite way to start the day, no.”_

 

_“This is not me, okay? This was a mistake.”_

 

The joy she’d felt from making things right with Finn earlier deflated, that pit in her stomach back and heavier the longer she stood here. Just seconds before, she’d felt like one person, but now that she was here, back in this apartment, standing in front of Bellamy with their daughter just a few feet away, she felt like someone else entirely, like a whole different person.

 

It gnawed at her.

 

“I made plenty, if you want some,” he offered, verging on shy as he scratched the back of his neck. Madi watched the two of them curiously, for once staying quiet. 

 

“I, um, I can’t. Finn’s waiting down in the car, actually…”

 

She kept her eyes locked on Bellamy’s, and for just a second, just a flash, she swore she saw something like  _hurt_ on his face, like she’d socked him right in the stomach, before he schooled his expression to stone. She couldn’t be sure, it was so quick, barely there, but she swore -

 

(Since when did he care?)

 

(Since when did _she?_ )

 

Madi hopped off the barstool, going over to the coat-rack and grabbing her jacket, pulling her beanie back over her head. “I’m ready whenever you are,” she said to Clarke, before smiling at Bellamy. “Thanks for - well, y'know. I had fun hanging around here today.”

 

“It’s not everyday I get such a worthy opponent in Mario Kart,” he said, smiling at her, warm and soft. He loved her already, and when he loved, he loved with his whole heart. It was Bellamy Blake's trademark.

 

His daughter was already his world, that much was already clear as day.

 

She waved and headed toward the door, skipping down the steps with Clarke following behind her, but something made the blonde stop. She turned, finding Bellamy still standing in the door, watching her.

 

“I’ll….I’ll call you and we can figure out the details. Half the time here and half with me, or...whatever works?” she said, biting at her bottom lip again. He willed himself not to look at her lips, which would only lead to something stupid, like pulling the lip from her teeth, and surging forward with his own lips.

 

_Don't be stupid, Bellamy. You were a mistake to her. It never happened, remember?_

 

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, nodding, voice lacking the warmth he’d just had with Madi. She ignored the pang in her stomach as he turned away from her, heading back inside.

 

“Bellamy?” He paused, turning again, door half closed. “I just wanted to say...thank you. For being on board. I’m glad we’re doing this together.”

 

He nodded once more, not knowing what more to say, all the words lodged in his throat, all the things he wanted to say but never could and probably never would. She took that as her leave, finally turning and walking down the steps, into the car with Finn and Madi waiting to take them home.

 

“Yeah, me too, princess,” he finally said, voice barely above a whisper, with no one around but the air and stars to hear him.

 

He closed the door and locked it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry for the delay on this one! as always, feel free to come yell about all things The 100 and then some on tumblr with me (banrionrua). also, thank you thank you thank you for all the rad responses to this story, seriously. comments and kudos make my whole day/week/month.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos much appreciated, since this is my first leap back into all this in many, many moons, and my first with this fandom. feedback is my jam.
> 
> dedicated to the beautiful CW masterpiece that was Life Unexpected which deserved 20 seasons, but fate was a cruel, cruel thing.


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